This page contains unmarked spoilers for Dark Souls. You Have Been Warned!
The Scorched Contract is a challenge mod of Dark Souls that adds a new Harder Than Hard difficulty to the standard new game playthrough. The focus of the mod are the titular Scorched Contracts, new stipulations and penalties that are applied to the player each time they defeat a boss. The longer you play the game, the weaker you become, so The Scorched Contract is as much a test of your perseverance as much as it will be your skill.
You can find the mod here in the Nexus site
, though it is only available for the Prepare to Die edition of the game.
This Game Mod contains the following tropes:
- Character Select Forcing:
- Gywndolin's Contract will drain your stamina to nothing each time you cast a ranged spell, and won't allow you to cast another ranged sell until you get all your stamina back. Dedicated caster builds will eventually be forced to use a weapon or abandon their current character due to this.
- There are no less than a handful of Contracts that affect your health bar in some way, and you'll eventually get them all. Combined, they cripple the health bar to such an extant that increasing Vitality is a waste of time.
- The Bed of Chaos and The Great Grey Wolf Sif have Contracts that can be countered by equipping the Old Witch's Ring and the Covenant of Artorias respectively. Whether you can live with one or somehow both Contracts in exchange for having any ring slots for better rings is up to the player.
- Checkpoint Starvation: Pinwheel's Contract disables every Bonfire in the game that you couldn't warp to with the Lordvessel in the normal game. This happens even before you get the Lordvessel proper.
- Curse Escape Clause: Using Cast Light on yourself will remove Manus' penalty as long as its active, allowing for normal soul gain outside boss fights.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff:
- The Gaping Dragon's Contract greatly reduces your Poison and Toxic resistance. The same goes for the Stray Demon's Contract reducing Bleed resistance.
- Black Dragon Kalameet's Contract is none other that his Calamity effect, making the player take permanently doubled damage.
- Damage Over Time:
- The 4 Kings' Contract curses the players with Lifedrain, slowly but noticeably reducing health per second.
- The Bed of Chaos' Contract will cause the player to take continuous fire damage unless they equip the Old Witch Ring.
- Developer's Foresight:
- If you perform the Sequence Breaking trick that lets you drop down to the Lower Undead Burg, then after killing Capra Demon its contract will apply to the Tauros Demon and Bell Gargoyles boss fights.
- If you somehow obtain Centipede Demon's Contract before fighting O&S (which is not possible without glitches) then they'll still regenerate HP.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Contracts can be acquired in a variety of orders, allowing for a personalized and customized experience with the mod. The only stipulations are the need for the Lordvessel to get to the second half of the game, and defeating every boss to unlock the path to Gywn.
- Experience Penalty:
- Chaos Witch Quelagg's Contract infects the player with a permanent Egg Head status, and said status will halve all sources of Soul gain.
- Manus, Father of the Abyss' Contract gives a more brutal version of the above, preventing Souls gain from all non-Boss enemies.
- Flunky Boss: Capra Demon's Contract adds a location appropriate enemy or 2 to each remaining boss fight in the game.
- Maximum HP Reduction:
- The lesser effect of Manus' Contract shaves off a noticeable portion of the player's health bar.
- Seath the Scaleless' Contract inflicts permanent Curse status to the player, which means permanently halved health.
- Regenerating Health: Centipede Demon's Contract blesses every remaining boss with minor HP Regen.
- Sequential Boss: The Iron Golem's Contract turns Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough into a 5 stage boss fight, beginning as it does in a normal game before it ends with you fighting both bosses in their giant forms.
- Skippable Boss: Averted with the very first Contract, which forced the player to kill every boss in the game before they can enter the Kiln and defeat Gywn.
- Too Awesome to Use: The Ring of Succor and Content grants health regeneration, increased potency of healing effects, and higher shield stability. It also breaks after you remove it, like its sister Ring of Favor and Protection. Given how you'll eventually need to sacrifice at least 1 ring slot if you want the game to remain playable, you may find yourself never using this ring.
